Tuesday

Breakfast: Half a grapefruit. Bowl of oat bran with coconut. Black coffee. The coconut is dried coconut from the lady who sells the beans and spices at the farmers' market. It adds fat to the oat bran. This is also good if you want to add a little cocoa powder and raw sugar but I'm not doing that this morning.

Lunch: Sandwich - portobello mushroom marinated in balsamic vinegar, onions, and lettuce, on multi-grain bread. Avocado.

Dinner: Open to suggestions.

Fuel

SEPTA is on strike, so I'm riding my bike to work. It's 40 degrees... real-feel: 38... real-feel on a moving bicycle: god damn cold. So I had a bowl of hot oat bran with molasses and flaxseed, for fuel.

I'll have a cold ride home in the dark to look forward to, so for lunch, I'm bringing a Thermos full of potato-leek soup (extra rosemary makes it seem warmer to me), with a side of red beans with lemon-pepper (the pepper is super-hot). And a couple slices of multi-grain bread for toast right about tea-time.

Here we go!

Fats: flaxseed and oat bran

You can't see the flaxseed in this picture, but it's there, and it's full of fat.

Here's the important thing about flaxseed:











Its calories come mostly from fats. Omega 3 and 6 fatty acids, which you can also get from nuts, coconuts, and vegetable oils, among other things.




Flaxseed is always in my refrigerator. I add it to stew, oat bran, cereal, sprinkle it on squash, salads, sandwiches, toast. You can put it on anything. If it has a taste, it's a slightly nutty taste, but it doesn't really have a taste.

What you see above is a bowl of hot oat bran, with two tablespoons (or thereabout) of flaxseed mixed in, and granola sprinkled on top. This is an incredibly filling breakfast. The oat bran (1 cup of it) has 33% of your "recommended" daily protein, along with 28% of your iron, 58% of your fiber, and 10% of your fat.

The granola is just fucking delicious and has maple syrup and vanilla, so there you have that. The granola contains: rolled oats, walnuts (again, look at the fats and protein), sunflower seeds, maple syrup, raisins, cranberries (look at the color!), coconut, canola oil, and vanilla extract.

This breakfast (or -- if you're studying for a test or you have a deadline and/or you're sleepy and lazy -- dinner) is a powerhouse of fats, protein, and iron. Also, you can have it with toast and blueberry preserves, and then it's just game over. Look at this. Shut up.